I'm writing this because I don't feel like I should text you about it.
I feel better, but not by much. Everything still feels dead. I feel fundamentally different. I look at this school that I used to love and feel like I don't know it anymore. Everyone feels dead. I can't imagine a future for myself. I know it exists.
There's this book that Ewan's been reading called After Finitude by Quentin Meillassoux, who is this philosopher who kind of kicked off the speculative realist thing in the 2000s. He tried to work out this thing about an ontological argument for God that was really daunting, and my brain is too foggy to remember the details. He was trying to refute Kant and considered his project a failure, so he has completely stopped writing and just lectures in some uni in France now. In After Finitude, he tries to reconfigure Kant's empiricism to accommodate for the existence of carbon dating and fossils or something. Like, reality is something that exists outside of our awareness because there are things that we can prove existed long before us. Yeah. That thought has made feeling not real feel better. Like, there must be the world I remember liking outside of the feeling that it has died. The world as I knew it must be going on elsewhere.
Simon Critchley wrote that philosophy comes out of disappointment. I feel too stupid for philosophy or anything. I have no idea what to do with my life.
I keep wanting to shout my feelings out at people but can never bring myself to do it for obvious reasons. I just want to lose it. Like, "I'm fuckjng losing it! I'm drowning over here! I can't take it! I want this to stop!" Sometimes I'm afraid this is the beginning of me having schizophrenia, and there's a part of me that wants that. Like, maybe I'll just randomly go unconscious, and somebody will find me, and then they'll understand. That thought scares me.
I feel like something I really loved has died. I keep getting the feeling like *I* was the one who died. Last week, during the first snowfall of the winter, I kept wanting to tell everyone that I'm no longer the same person. This felt delusional and scared me - the thought I was convincing myself I was almost literally a ghost. I keep feeling like everything is about to leave or end. The future seems inconceivable. I used to have dreams. I feel like I have none now. It's only been, however, long this has been. Sometimes, I feel better. Sometimes, I feel so much worse. I'm hypersensitive and totally apathetic. I laugh and cum all the same, which makes me feel like I'm making this up.
I'm sluggish. I'm irrational. I'm a bit better with bathing.
I wish I was smarter. People think of me as smart, but feeling like you're skilled at something makes the thought of feeling like a fuck-up more manageable. I know people who make really fantastic music or videos or are in doing PhDs on mathematical physics. I'm surrounded by some of the most interesting people I'll ever meet. I feel like I have nothing going. I feel like I'm losing touch with them.
In my worst moments this last week, I've collapsed into my bed and sobbed and sobbed and thought about unenrolling in all my classes and driving all the way back to Red Deer, never to return to Edmonton. I've thought about emailing my old manager at Home Depot and asking for a job. I've thought about completely dropping out. I think about the thousands of dollars I'd waste. All the people I wouldn't see ever again. I think about my friend David, who is in law school. He's a mirror to me. People compare me to him all the time. He looks like me. He is as funny as I am. People often don't understand him. Sometimes, I wonder if he's worried about me. I have referred to him as the "Good Ben" for as long as I've known him. For whatever reason, in my impulse to leave Edmonton, I think about him. I think about his girlfriend Eli, who I have met in his apartment, and how she apologized to me for seeming grouchy that one time.
I often feel like I arrived in Edmonton by accident and ended up meeting people who felt and thought and acted exactly like me. Now I feel like I don't belong anywhere anymore. I don't know what my life will look like if I leave them. I can't leave them. I just have to hold on for however long.
I don't know how to get better. I read old journals, and I remember that I've felt like this forever. I imagine 16-year-old me, who I forgot would feel like this all the time. I remember now that I straight up repressed the memories of feeling like this. I feel like he would be disappointed but also slightly amazed at how long and far I've made it off this feeling. I'm sorry, man. It's going to get a lot worse. I'm going to try to fix it now, though.
I feel so much shame. I feel so much shame. So much shame. I can't think straight.
One day, this will end, and I'll unfortunately forget about it. But I also can't. I have to make a change. I can't live life like this.
Music sounds lame. I listen to a lot of Dean Blunt and Pedro the Lion and John Maus.
I've told virtually everyone I know that I'm going through something. Everyone has been very nice. I never usually do that. I feel like I'm having a televised temper tantrum.
I get so anxious for nothing. I get so anxious I avoid looking at my emails for days. I have to hype myself up to talk to my professors, who I assume are going to air out everything I dislike about myself.
I do a good job acting like everything is normal. I can be awkward and annoying to Sarah. I can joke to Ewan. I can propose an assignment. I can talk to my dad.
I'm interested in nothing. I wish I was interested in something again. I don't know what I'm going to do with my life.
I absolutely have to see a doctor. Like, undoubtedly. This is not normal. In fact, this is dysfunctional. These are clear signs of persistent mental illness. These are clear signs of a crisis. The part of me that parents myself is like, "You are in a crisis. You have somehow managed to relatively get through 16 years of schooling while bareknuckling something that makes people stop after 11 out of pure denial of suffering and, quite frankly, pure grit. You have a lot more nerve than you give yourself credit for. But you need to make big changes. This is getting worse. What happens in another year when this happens again and you decide to do something stupid? What happens when you can't take it anymore? As the only person who knows what is going on, being you, you have to take this seriously. It's not like this could hurt you. This has hurt you really badly. This has permanently scarred you. You are actually traumatized. You literally repress the memories of this happening to you, only to remember them when you can't help but face them. There's a reason you know so many people with mental illness. You are one of them. There's no Tony Soprano-ing your way out of it. If you don't do something to stop this, it's going to hurt you worse. This can only get worse. A lot of people really care about you. More than you seem to really comprehend."
I used to like the snow. Now it feels like death-stuff. Looking outside makes me feel like the world has died. I absolutely hate the night. I hate going to bed. I feel better in the morning. I hate, hate, hate being alone. I can't deal with it anymore. I write in spite of the persistent feeling I can't write or read anymore. I need to know how I think and feel. I've lost the plot on that.
I've lost the plot on how I think and feel.
I feel like this is survival. I feel so melodramatic. I have to make big changes.
